Wieden & Kennedy

W+K Tokyo welcomed Frank Hahn and Naoki Ito as executive creative directors, effective immediately. The pair joins MD Trish Adams to complete the management team at the agency's office.

Hahn is no stranger to the W+K network, having served as ECD in the agency's Shanghai office from 2006-2008 and as CD/art director in W+K Amsterdam for seven years prior to that. Ito meanwhile hails from GT Tokyo, where he served as CD, picked up five Gold Lions along the way and worked on campaigns including Sony Walkman's "REC YOU", "Nike Cosplay" and the "Uniqlo March" website.

In a statement, W+K global ECD John C. Jay says, "...Together, Frank and Naoki are a powerful force, able to blend the art of storytelling with both craft and technology in order to create a strong and emotional connection with the consumer through multimedia."

More: "WKEntertainment: "Renegotiating the Relationship Between Art, Media and Advertising"

Word on the street is Hanft Raboy has lost the Match.com review, and that the account has been handed to Wieden + Kennedy. We're looking into the matter, as neither Match.com nor W+K were immediately available for comment.

Update: AdWeek reports that this account has landed at Campbell Ewald.

More: "Account News: MasterCard, Match.com, Some Big Client"

NSFW: There's a half second of dark, semi-nude naked lady dancing in the video.

So it turns out that when you're a frequently-talked-about agency that never sends a publicist after reporters, folks like Kiran and I are left to go digging around the Web for things to talk about. Wieden + Kennedy has maybe one of the only sites we'd actually visit if not paid to do so. But don't get a big head guys, WK Radio plays some good tunes.

And now the agency's trying to "renegotiate the relationship between art, music and advertising." WKEntertainment is born! According to their YouTube info,

"[u]sing a combination of interviews and live footage we will expose the world to all the cool bands, record labels, and underground venues that make Portlands music scene so unique."

Lending value to the vibrant Portland music scene seems cool, like one of those things Dan dreamed of doing as a lad but DRAT! he had to get a real job. And now that he owns the planet (not really), he gets to live that dream. That's one semi-plausible motive — click here for more. And Twitter, of course.

More: "Still Crazy — Dan Wieden And David Kennedy"

There are more than a few Sims games out there, and the latest is a game called MySims Racing. W+K's blog has the trailers they've made for the game, the best of which is posted above. Credits, below.

Creative Directors: Aaron Allen & Jed Alger
Creative: Charlie Gschwend, Rob Kendall
Account Management: Katie Nance, Becca Milby
Studio Artist: Aaron Lee
Studio Manager: Maya Roberts
Strategic Planning: Adema Sall
Media: Kim Humphries, Kelsey Bozanich
Project Manager: Jane Monaghan
Retouching: Kyle Pero
Print Producer: Deborah Hyde
Art Buyer: Mia Chong-Hanssen
TV Director: Johannes Gamble
Viral Video Directors: Patrick Stanton,
Broadcast: Lara Gallagher
Special Thanks to Charlotte Arnold, Dan Blaney and Eric Stevens.

While it's embroiled in legal skirmishes with Eddie Van Halen and a woman behind some curious workout attire, Nike might finally have a case thanks to those optimistic folks at Wieden + Kennedy, London.

The agency is calling out a new ad appearing in UK Metro trades for Sure, which like W+K's ad for Nike a year back, features a white dude with a Blue Steel expression, wearing athletic gear, promoting a sport we don't really play here Stateside and the same slogan.

Whether it's a spoof, coincidence or homage, it's hard to tell but the W+K London folks don't seem to mind someone taking the piss.

Via

More: "Levis: The Country Was Built by Slaves"

The above Levi's campaign, which was lauded by AdWeek and lambasted by AdAge, is summed up by one black magic marker and the unknown source of the scrawled words, "by slaves".

On her site, Director of Global Trends at Global Hue Christine Huang put it like this. "Levis (or rather W+K) is glorifying these centuries old American ideals — Optimism! Egoism! Manifest Destiny! — while making paltry gestures towards the reality of American history and what America is today. Besides the few ethnic actors in the video, their print campaign is disappointingly monochromatic and seems almost unapologetically alienating. It would have been really amazing to see Levis pay homage to the symbols of true individuality from our past — the Freedom riders, abolitionists, Suffragists, veterans. 'The Frontier' is sexy and all, but how about some real American heroes?"

Now you go.

Note: The "by slaves" remark was not part of the original poster. Someone passing by added it, we presume.

More: "Applause: BBH UK's Levi's Print Ads"

After various Big Apple-based copywriting stints at Ogilvy, R/GA and most recently Mother, Ben Hughes is remaining local and joining Wieden + Kennedy, New York as CD on the Delta account. Right on time for the discount wars.

Hughes, who is set to start after the holiday weekend, will also handle new business affairs at W+K. While his resume touts a range of client work from Dell to Stella Artois to Verizon throughout his agency travels, Hughes has also been dabbling in a little arts & entertainment as a scribe for Esquire.

More: "W+K New York Employs Charlie Murphy, Kobe, Lebron"

Hey all, we're working on some cool things related to Cannes this morning. Will have more for you in a bit, but it's taking a bit more time than expected. Hold tight.

- m

More: "news"

Weiden + Kennedy's shared two of their latest spots. The first includes Charlie Murphy who plays Leroy Smith, the guy who apparently beat Michael Jordan for the last spot on their high school basketball team, thereby creating the initial motivation for Jordan's entire career.

The second, posted after the jump, is the latest in the Most Valuable Puppets series. We love puppets. Maybe they'll agree to come on The Week in Advertising sometime.

Note: We rarely hear dirt on W+K, which is presumably because employees there are happy. That's probably mostly true since they do some cool stuff and they have a fairly decent radio station and blog and just feel plugged in. Well, until now that is. We've been sent some interesting info about the agency that we're working to confirm. Let us know if you can help us out. (E-mail agencyspy at mediabistro dot com).

Via

More: "Still Crazy — Dan Wieden And David Kennedy"

continued...

The results to my search for info regarding who will be attending Cannes from which agency have been flowing in like, well, maybe one every other day or so. Today Wieden responded.

"We've got a lot of submissions for Cannes this year representing all of our clients from Honda 'Let it Shine' to the Nike Women Here I Am and EA Sports LET'S FIFA 09 Integrated Campaigns and Coca Cola Romance Prints, Coca Cola Olympics and many more.

"W+K has made a collective decision that no one from the network will attend the awards ceremony this year, however I'm sure many will attend as guests of our vendors."

So, there you have it. In the last story we published on the subject commenter Milk the Pigs wrote: "Is there any other industry that has as many awards or makes such a big deal about them? Our business has been literally decimated. Isn't it time to get back to work and forget about the lavish junkets to France? Any agency that has had layoffs this year and is sending anyone to Cannes should be ashamed. Award shows stink. We should have one award show that gives out no more than 50 awards yearly—then maybe it would mean something to win."

What do you think? Agree or disagree?

More: "Euro Rapp's Cannes Plans"